The U.S. Humanoid Robot Industry Is Falling Behind

Humanoid robots have the potential to significantly boost productivity and economic growth by performing physical tasks more efficiently than humans. Despite this promise, the United States lacks a robotics industry capable of supporting large-scale production, sales, and adoption of these technologies. As ITIF details, “while the United States invented robots, it is now an also-ran—at least in production—with the leading robotics companies located in engineering powerhouses of Germany, Japan, and Switzerland.”

While the United States continues to build its humanoid robotics industry, China already has a strong robotics industry. China has already surpassed the United States in robot adoption and now leads global humanoid robot sales. Visual Capitalist data shows that U.S. companies accounted for fewer than 5 percent of sales in 2025, compared with nearly 90 percent for Chinese companies.

The United States and China have taken very different approaches to develop their robotics industries. Although the United States was historically a leader in robotics innovation, today it lacks a robust national robotics strategy that could help foster development of a strong domestic robotics industry capable of producing and deploying robots at scale. Indeed, as ITIF highlights, “Other nations, particularly China, have developed and implemented robust national robotics strategies. The United States has not.” As a result, U.S. businesses have been slower to adopt robots, limiting domestic demand for all types of robots. The United States has also fallen behind in foreign demand, with its robot exports accounting for only 5.4 percent of total robot exports in 2022.

Meanwhile, China has made robotics a national priority, using government subsidies to encourage businesses to invest in automation, increase domestic demand, and strengthen the industry. As a previous ITIF report explains, “many Chinese robots are 80 percent as good as the best foreign ones, but are much cheaper. This price point drives sales.” Lower prices have helped Chinese companies scale more quickly and generate much greater demand for robots. In sum, while the United States lags in domestic and foreign demand for its robots, China has cultivated robust domestic and exports markets for its robots.

Diving into humanoid robots specifically, the United States significantly trails China in sales. Chinese firms accounted for roughly 90 percent of global humanoid robot shipments in 2025. China's Unitree sold 5,500 G1 robots, AgiBot sold 5,168 A2 robots, and UBTECH sold 1,000 Walker robots. By contrast, leading U.S. companies sold far fewer units: Figure AI sold roughly 150 robots, Agility Robotics 150, and Tesla 150. In total, major Chinese firms sold approximately 12,868 humanoid robots in 2025, compared to just 450 sold by major U.S. companies. (See Figure 1. Note that these figures are for sales and not production.)

Figure 1: Total humanoid robot units sold in 2025, by company

This gap is concerning because robotics, including humanoid robotics, is a key dual-use technology, and leadership, once lost, is difficult to reclaim. As production scales, manufacturers can lower costs and improve product quality and performance through economies of scale and learning-by-doing effects. These advantages reinforce market leadership, making it increasingly difficult for later entrants to compete. Leadership in humanoid robotics will therefore shape not only future manufacturing competitiveness but also defense, logistics, and other strategic sectors that rely on advanced robotic systems.

Policymakers should adopt a comprehensive national robotics strategy that strengthens U.S. competitiveness across the entire robotics ecosystem. Because robotics industries benefit from powerful scale and learning effects, countries that achieve widespread deployment enjoy lower costs, higher-quality products, and faster innovation, making early innovation leadership difficult to overcome. While large-scale investments such as a national robotics moonshot initiative would best position the United States to compete, Congress and the administration can take meaningful action in other ways as well, including by improving industry data collection, expanding robotics research, supporting domestic robotics manufacturers, accelerating adoption among businesses and federal agencies, modernizing regulations, investing in workforce training, and protecting U.S. firms from unfairly subsidized foreign competition. Collectively, these policies would enable the United States to restore its leadership in robotics, strengthen its advanced manufacturing base, and capture the productivity and economic benefits of the next generation of automation.